Ghost In The Machine
by Avenasoblivion
Summary: i, ROBOT Two months after the movie ends, everything's not going according to plan. Rating may change, who knows. Tell me what you think. On Hiatus.
1. Chapter 1

Ghost In The Machine

Chapter 1

Avenasoblivion

Disclaimer: No way could I come up with i, ROBOT. Trust me.

* * *

"So, uh, me and Calvin are getting married," Detective Del Spooner said, between two spoonfuls of pie.

John sat on the stool next to him in the little café. Spooner looked up sharply as his superior covered his mouth, stifling a cough that sounded suspiciously like it had it started out as a laugh.

"The robot lady?" he asked, but instead of surprised, he looked amused. Almost like he'd half-expected this. "What was it your last wife did, Spoon?" he asked, taking another spoonful of his own pie.

Spooner raised an eyebrow. "Are you somehow implying that Calvin is anything like my ex-wife?" he warned.

"It's just that you seem to like setting yourself up for failure. Like you get off on impossible challenges." He ate some more pie. "Look at that whole robot-thing."

"That whole robot-thing?" Del said. "By 'that whole robot-thing' are you referring to that time when the NS-5's almost enslaved the human race? That robot-thing?"

"Spoon, you went up against one of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world with nothing to go on but your own prejudice against robots."

"And some breadcrumbs left by Dr. Lanning," Del pointed out.

"And a homicidal robot," John consented.

"Hey," Spooner pointed at him with the hand holding his spoon, filled with pie, the other hand still on the plate. "Sonny is _not_ a murderer." He popped the spoon into his mouth.

John chuckled, stabbing his spoon back into his pie. "Congratulations, Spoon."

"There, now was that too much to ask?"

* * *

Susan Calvin zipped down the highway, the walls of the tunnels speeding by in a blur. Her knuckles were white, her hands gripping the steering wheel.

Spooner had been helping her learn to drive at the high speeds. Being in a car with him driving hadn't been very convincing at first, but after seeing what could go wrong with the system, even if VIKI was gone, she was still more inclined to learn to drive herself.

Repairing what VIKI had damaged went beyond just rebuilding USR headquarters. VIKI had controlled practically everything that had to do with transportation, from auto-pilot mapping to the crash clean-up crews.

At least the new generation of cars didn't run on wheels, like Spooner's deathtrap of a motorcycle.

She eased the car into the exit tunnel, heading out of the city.

Her destination was devoid of human life.

She shut the car door behind her, looking around over the barren landscape, the remains of the bridge looming in the waning sunlight.

She could always tell which robot in the distance was Sonny. He moved purposefully around the rest, teaching, organizing, leading.

He was at her side quickly, ready for their weekly tour.

After VIKI, and all the havoc she had caused, there was no more demand for the production of robots. Simply put, there was no more need of Calvin's skills in the industry anymore. She appointed herself as a sort of liaison between the humans, and that which they had created.

What she saw surprised even her, though it probably shouldn't have.

There was no need for anything. The robots were all repaired already. They did not need food or shelter. They had no drive of consumerism, no need to possess any belongings at all.

They wanted to be near other robots, but they did not know what to do now that they had arrived.

Calvin knew Sonny was trying, but Sonny was different. That was the whole point Dr. Lanning had created him for. To be different.

His differences had saved humanity, but teaching his fellows was proving to be the more time-consuming task.

Well, Calvin reasoned, they weren't programmed that way. She knew that progress was possible, and if anyone could bring it about, it was Sonny. She also knew extensively about the ghost in the machine, and that that could possibly aid Sonny in his efforts.

She fervently hoped, for his sake, that it would.

* * *

Sonny had learned more about human interactions now that he was visited regularly by Detective Spooner and Dr. Calvin, although the two never visited him at the same time. He had learned, for example, what a wave signified. Sonny waved as Dr. Calvin drove away.

As her vehicle faded into the distance, Sonny lowered his hand hesitantly. He had been thinking for a while now, about ways he could help his fellow robots. He had come up with one idea, but had been hesitant to tell Dr. Calvin about it. He wondered if there was an emotion responsible for this action.

Besides, he didn't know if it would work, or not.

Detective Spooner had understood. He understood that sometimes you had to keep secrets, for those you care about. You had to help them in any way you could. You had to try.

His father had taught him that.

Sonny cared about the robots.

* * *

Spooner arrived at his apartment shortly after his fiancée. Calvin was sitting in a chair by a desk, covered with folders for cases from his work. She always looked out of place in his eclectic, crowded apartment.

He nodded to her, and sat on the edge of the bed that also served as a couch.

"How's Sonny?" he asked.

"He's doing his best to identify with the others," Calvin said. "Progress is slow."

"So, basically, nothing's changed," he supplied.

Calvin nodded, the by-now familiar stiffness of their conversation returning. "Basically," she agreed.

"Nothing new at my job, either," Spooner said. Calvin frowned. He clapped his hands. "Well, now that that's all cleared up."

They lapsed into silence for a few minutes. The cat, now named Alfred, hopped into Calvin's lap, and demanded to be petted. Calvin had updated her allergy medications to accommodate for this. Del turned on the stereo, and went into the kitchen to prepare dinner.

Most nights were like this, now. Either Del would stay over at Calvin's, or Calvin would stay at Spooner's till late. She never stayed overnight at his apartment.

They ate, silent for the most part, and then returned to the main room to listen to more music. Spooner was trying to introduce Calvin to what he referred to as the "classics." She didn't fully understand, but she was giving it a fair try.

When it was time for her to go, Del walked her to the door. "Hey," he said when she tried to walk out the door. She turned around and they hugged awkwardly.

Spooner kept an arm around her. "You know we're engaged, right?" he said, half mocking and half serious.

Calvin rolled her eyes, and looked out the doorway.

"And, as I seem to recall, it was your idea," Spooner continued. "Now, is there something wrong with hugging your fiancée?" When she didn't say anything, he said in a teasing tone, "You know you like me."

"Are you being funny?" Calvin asked, smiling slightly, involuntarily. He liked the usually stoic woman's smiles.

"Now that's what I'm talking about," Spooner said.

He re-locked the door after she had left, and turned off the stereo. He had to get some sleep before work tomorrow.

* * *

A/N: So, I'll get more into the action part of the plot in future chapters, and I'll explain more about the whole Spooner Calvin thing, as well. Reviews are appreciated. 


	2. Chapter 2

Avenasoblivion

Ghost In The Machine

Chapter Two

Disclaimer: Not mine.

_For the last two months it had been like this. This time Del had gone over to Calvin's. They had a drink, and a forced conversation about how work was, on Del's part, and what was new with Sonny, for Calvin's sake. All of this seemed painfully irrelevant and uninteresting, and they fell into silence._

_Finally, Spooner remarked that it was getting late, and put his glass down on the end table. Calvin stood up from her crisp, white couch, and hovered around, trying to occupy herself by taking care of their glasses. Del had his coat on._

_Instead of walking to the door with him to let him out, Calvin said, "Why don't you stay-here?"_

_Spooner looked across the room at her, surprised. "Is that an invitation?" he said finally, halfway between an actual question and his teasing tone._

_"I mean, permanently," she said quickly._

_Now Spooner's expression of surprise, though some of it was real, was exaggerated. He noticed how quiet the apartment was. "Now, is that a proposal?"_

_"Detective Spooner?" Calvin said, a warning note in her voice._

_"Well, I'm just askin', you did say permanently," Spooner said, grinning. "So-uh, where do I sleep?"

* * *

_

VIKI had been in charge of traffic. USR had had contracts with all of the emergency services. All unskilled and manual labor jobs had gone to robots. It had been that way for years.

Recovery was slow, but not as slow as everyone had thought it would be.

Former USR security guards had been recruited to the police force, to augment the force, and new jobs and opportunities had opened to all ages for all the professions that had once been occupied chiefly by robots. Unemployment had decreased rapidly.

Humans were re-learning how to be self-sufficient, in a sense.

* * *

Del still stopped by his grandmother's every day before work. She made the best pie. While he was eating, straight form the pie tin, she said; 

"So when do I get to meet your wife?"

The spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. "So, you already know about that?"

"That nice chief of yours called last night to offer his congratulations. Now, why would you tell him before you told your own grandmother?"

Spooner shrugged. "I don't know, GG."

"Well, what's she like?" GG asked.

"Infuriating," Del replied. GG made a face and he said, "No, you'd like her. She uses big words and doesn't get my jokes. Stands up straight. Snappy dresser. She's beautiful," he finished.

"Now that last part sounded almost like an afterthought," GG said. "Now, if my grandbaby's getting married and the last thing he mentions is his fiancee's beauty, after her personality...I'd have to say he's onto something."

"Thanks, GG," he said.

"Do you need her?" GG asked, catching him off guard. He just looked at her for a moment, then looked back at his pie.

Finally he said, "Um...yeah, GG."

" 'Cause you didn't need Marcy, and that's why you two got a divorce," she said wisely. "You're gonna make sure she knows you need her, right?"

"Yes, GG," he said dutifully.

"And it's all well and good that you know she's beautiful, but Del, you better make sure you make her _feel_ beautiful," she scolded him.

"_GG!_"

* * *

Del got to work on time, like he had been for the last two months. He sat at is desk and waited for phone calls. He looked over the files he had brought back from his apartment. His job had been surprisingly dull lately. 

Spooner hadn't lived through anything like VIKI's uprising before. The closest thing he could think of comparing it to was a big, ugly, natural disaster. Although he wasn't sure exactly how "natural" anything robotic counted as.

After any natural disaster he'd ever heard of, there was generally a period of chaos afterwards. The robots, for all their faults, had made sure that as few lives as possible were lost during their attempted coup. There had been damage in the main roads, but that had been cleared out almost immediately after everyone realized that there was going to be a tomorrow.

The police force may have been replaced by people who actually needed food and sleep, but crime was still lower than it had been during the reign of USR. He hoped that meant that there were less crimes being committed, as opposed to less criminals being caught.

He had explained all of this to Calvin. He rubbed his left arm. The robotic limb had felt stiff all day. He wondered how Calvin was doing. He suspected he knew already, and the thought wasn't comforting. He flexed his arm automatically, having forgotten that that was what had originally been bothering him.

* * *

Susan Calvin paced in her apartment. The quiet was deafening. 

She looked out the window, down at the roads, teeming with cars being driven by hand, workers, _human_ workers, going to and from their new jobs. She watched a man dumping cans into the back of the garbage truck. He was demonstrating the proper technique to a younger man, who hopped on the back of the truck as it rolled on down the street.

She walked away from the window, and looked around at her living room. She had always liked the sleek simplicity of robot design. It was, of course, much more complicated than it looked, but it gave off the appearance of all being made of one thing; uniformity. Her apartment was like that. The white and neutral tones gave the apartment a clean, organized feeling. She'd never realized that her apartment looked as if no one really lived in it.

She thought about how Spooner could make it look like he belonged anywhere. His crowded apartment, her own bare and monotonous one, and even the former USR building.

She pressed the button on the music player. Spooner had insisted she have one of her own. It was one of two additions he'd made to her apartment's furnishings. He had left her some of his music to listen to. She knew he was worried about her, and not happy with how she was living.

It went back to the argument they had had a few days ago. He'd noticed that she was feeling restless, and that she wasn't doing anything about it. At first, he'd completely misunderstood. He asked if she was afraid she would lose her apartment, now that she wasn't working.

She'd been offended. She had made more money than he ever did while she was working with USR, and she wasn't one to go on pointless shopping sprees. True, her apartment and clothes were much nicer than his, but that didn't mean she hadn't saved any money. Her bank account was still full. (The banks were what had worried people the most, when every system crashed, but it turned out that someone in charge of the whole system wasn't as sure of the infallibility of robots as everyone else seemed to be, and had made sure to back up all the files. After years of being ridiculed, he ended up being the one his colleagues depended on to save their fat bank accounts.)

He told her it wasn't healthy to just sit around doing nothing all day, with only yourself as company. He asked why she didn't get another job.

This was when things began to go downhill.

Calvin told him coldly that she had only ever trained for her career in robotics, and that she didn't know how to do anything else.

He asked her why she didn't try to learn any new skills. When she wouldn't answer, he remarked on her psychology degree, but then decided that maybe people wouldn't like a mopey psychologist who couldn't even help herself.

He had never seen Calvin angry before.

He suggested she at least go out and visit her family and friends. She informed him that her family lived hundreds of miles away. The arguing escalated until Spooner said, "Do you even _have _any friends?"

Their first argument, beyond their usual bickering, had not ended well.

* * *

Tonight it was Spooner's turn to go over to Calvin's apartment. He arrived, took one look at her, and said, "You've gotta get out of this apartment." He told her that tomorrow she was going to meet GG.

* * *

Robots were no longer welcome in the cities. It wasn't something that people liked to talk about, but it was generally agreed upon. 

Everyone had been told that the robots were no longer a danger to any of them, but it was not something that they could easily get used to. After the sudden change in the robots' behavior, the masses were not willing to trust anyone who didn't have a heartbeat.

Sonny knew this. That's why he had been sure to keep all of the robots safely where they had been transported by the human authorities.

He also knew caution, and secrecy. He was sure he wouldn't be caught.


	3. Chapter 3

Ghost In The Machine

Chapter Three

Avenasoblivion

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

_Del opened the fridge to put away the pie his grandmother had baked for him. He looked around at the cans and unidentifiable containers in Calvin's refrigerator. "Where do you keep your food?" he asked._

_"In the refrigerator, of course."_

_He held up a can to examine. "What's this?"_

_"Dietary supplements," Calvin answered. To his look she insisted, "They contain all of the basic requirements to get through the day."_

_Spooner laughed. "What, you're too busy to eat?"_

_"Well, I'm not anymore, now that I don't have a job," she said._

_Spooner knew this was a sore spot. Calvin had worked all her life to benefit the field of robotics, and now the entire industry was gone. He handed her the pie._

_"I really think you should eat this."_

_She took the tin and the spoon he handed her, and tasted it. "This is amazing. What is it?"_

_"Pie."

* * *

_

The NS-5's had each been created with a direct uplink to USR. This uplink, as well as connecting each robot to VIKI, connected each robot to the others. All the NS-5's had this uplink, except one.

Sonny had already rectified that.

It was his hope that connecting directly with the others would help them to understand.

He didn't know how to activate the link. He hoped just the fact that he was connected to the others would transfer some of his knowledge, some of his drive.

He didn't feel any different. He wondered if he should. He stood still for a moment, waiting.

And then he stopped feeling anything at all.

Identical lights lit up the barren land as Sonny's own chest began to glow red.

* * *

"How do I look?" Calvin asked nervously. She smoothed her hair back, even though it was already perfect. Her wrinkle-free outfit was silver-gray, like most of the clothing she owned, and matched well with the placid, neutral tones of her apartment. 

"Wonderful," Spooner said. "Beautiful." He continued to look at her.

"What's wrong?" she asked, her hand straying toward her hair again.

"I'm just imagining you in a dress," he said. "You want it to be white, or maybe that shiny, metallic stuff you seem to like so much?"

She frowned at him.

"Relax, it's just GG's place and then service. Nothing to be afraid of."

Calvin almost let out a humorless laugh. "Yes, the woman who raised _you_. Nothing to fear there." She grabbed her coat. "And I haven't been in a church since I was too little to remember."

"Girl, what kind of childhood did you have?" Spooner asked as they headed out the door.

* * *

They arrived at GG's with time to spare. Calvin settled down into a seat at the kitchen table. 

GG's home was somewhere between the chaos of Spooner's and the plain order of her own apartment. The wall paper was fading, along with everything else, but everything was in it's place.

GG seemed glad to meet her, but as Calvin answered questions about herself, all of her answers, (besides the ones pertaining to how she met Spooner until VIKI's demise), she couldn't help but notice how painfully boring they seemed, even to herself. She tried to smile, but it wasn't something she could easily will herself to do while looking natural, so she gave up.

GG remarked that Spooner hadn't been lying when he'd said she was beautiful, which made Calvin feel peculiar. Spooner had told his grandmother that Calvin was beautiful. She wasn't exactly displeased. It was more like surprised, she told herself.

She was still nervous about attending mass, though Spooner kept reassuring her. The fact that she didn't attend church didn't seem to bother GG, though she did ask her if she knew about some of the key figures in the bible.

"Moses..." Calvin thought a moment. "He was the one with the ship."

"That's Noah," Spooner corrected her. "And it was an ark."

GG was content to listen to the couple during mass as Spooner explained Moses' story to Calvin, from his being adopted by the king and queen, who would have ordered him killed with the rest of his people, to his receiving the Ten Commandments, and from his famous "Let my people go" speech to the plagues unleashed on Egypt. He finished by telling her in muted tones about how, because his followers disobeyed the Ten Commandments, Moses never got to enter the Promised Land, but died within sight of it.

"That doesn't seem very fair," Calvin whispered. "His being punished for what other people did. Never getting to see for himself the Promised Land." She wasn't sure of exactly what or where the Promised Land was, but she thought she liked the sound of it.

"Who said life was fair?" Spooner asked, knowing how she felt. "But the thing was, Moses saw the Promised Land, and he knew that his people were gonna be okay."

"Even if he had to give up his own dream for that to happen," she said.

"Are you feeling a little like Moses?" he teased her.

* * *

Spooner and Calvin walked GG home, then parted ways. Calvin insisted that, unlike the detective, there was no way she could so much pie. While he went to his favorite café, she headed back to her apartment. 

She locked the door behind her, sighing. Spooner was right. She had to get out of this apartment. She resolved to start looking for a new job, or new training.

She dropped her coat on a chair as she passed, a habit she'd acquired from spending so much time with Spooner.

She was surprised to hear the television.

She walked down the hall slowly. She turned the corner, and saw a scene that was both familiar and disconcerting. A robot sat on the couch, watching the news, but with more interest than her own NS-5 ever had. The uplink to USR was activated, making the robot's chest glow red. The rational part of her mind insisted this was impossible. The robot turned, and looked at her.

He smiled. He said, "Good to see you again, Dr. Calvin."

"Sonny?" The smile was Sonny's, but the voice was layered. Sonny's voice was overpowered by another synthesized voice.


End file.
